Premier Daniel Andrews vows to fight to keep children in adult prison

By Jane Lee, Richard Willingham

Premier Daniel Andrews has vowed to fight in court to keep teenagers in adult prison.

Mr Andrews last week backed out of a separate legal battle and returned Indigenous teenagers to youth justice centres, but more than a dozen non-Indigenous teenagers remain in Barwon prison.

Youths protesting on the roof of the Melbourne Youth Justice Centre at Parkville in March.

Photo: Jesse Marlow

"Rest assured the government will defend any action bought against it," Mr Andrews said.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the government to reveal how long children are being kept in their cells at Barwon prison ahead of a legal challenge against their detention there.

The government last month began moving children in youth detention to a unit at the maximum security adult prison, after a riot at Parkville detention centre caused about $2 million in damage. They were moved to the Grevillea unit of the prison, which the government declared a youth justice facility.

Advertisement

The children's lawyers have said that the children are being kept in lockdown for more than 20 hours a day, in breach of the government's legal obligations to them.

Justice Gregory Garde ordered documents be produced about the amount of time children were being confined in their cells at Grevillea, their daily routines in prison from November 1 to 5 and any behavioural management plans in place.

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services has previously said that "standard management of young people" at Grevillea did not involve 20 hours of lockdown each day.

It comes a week after the government released Indigenous children from Barwon to youth detention centres at Parkville and Malmsbury on the eve of a separate legal challenge on their behalf. The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services promised the court not to move any more Indigenous children to adult prison without approval from Indigenous Children's Commissioner Andrew Jackomos in exchange for the legal case being abandoned.

Some of the lawyers behind that case are mounting a fresh legal challenge against the detention of a number of non-Indigenous children currently at Grevillea and other children still at risk of being transferred there. This will begin before Justice Garde on Monday and is expected to run for about five days, against the Secretary, Children's Minister Jenny Mikakos and the state of Victoria.

The children's lawyers have told Fairfax Media that about 15 children still at Barwon prison are on remand, waiting for their charges to be heard at the Children's Court, with other children being transferred there daily.

Barrister Peter Morrissey, QC, said that the state could only have lawfully moved his clients to Barwon prison if they met certain legal obligations to them.

He said the facilities the children were being held in indicated it was never capable of complying with these obligations.

Mr Andrews on Tuesday reiterated that he made "no apology" for teen inmates being sent to Barwon prison, saying the Parkville centre had been "shamefully trashed."

Children may give evidence in the case though it is unclear whether they will appear at court in person or provide statements via their lawyers.

Outside court, a solicitor for the children, Meghan Fitzgerald, said she knew of at least one child who had been remanded directly to the Grevillea unit.

The law, she said, required the government to consider the developmental and mental needs of children when they held them in custody and prohibited it from holding them in lockdown or isolation.

She said some of her clients had previously been in educational programs six days a week for six hours a day in youth detention. "Now they're sitting in lockdown in conditions that are actually worse than the minimum standard for adults," she said